Love isn't Easy, Death is
by I Am Miranda Of The Tempest
Summary: Personal loyalty, my fatal flaw, supposed chains that restrained me from any goal I wished to accomplish. But was it just my fatal flaw that had gotten me into this mess? I couldn't tell. Why? Because I was a seaweed brain, and now I was dead. R&R!


**I know that Percy isn't a very deep and phylisophical person but wouldn't you be too after you'd died?**

Personal loyalty, my fatal flaw, supposed chains that restrained me from any goal I wished to accomplish. But was it just my fatal flaw that had gotten me into this mess? I couldn't tell. Why? Because I was a seaweed brain, and this entire mess was due to the fact that the very person that gave me that nickname was also who I had given my heart too. Was this what you would call a mess? I'm not sure. A mess was somthing you could fix, wasn't it? I believe it was, and I am not confident that I was important enough to call my death a disaster. My death..... two words I would never have thought I would be contemplating at this point in time. Was this a point in time? Was there time here? Where was here, anyway? I felt like I was floating, gliding perhaps, but on nothing. So this was death? If everything happens for a reason, then what was my reason for living? Just to live a short 16 years and die, trying to save someone who could never be saved by me if at all? And how could I love a person who could never love me back? Where was the underworld anyway? Wasn't I supposed to go there? I was a demigod so why wasn't I there? So many questions and not a single answer. I concentrated on gliding.

After a while I felt my ADHD kick in. It surprised me that it could effect me even in death but I let my mind wander anyway. This morning I had been at the beach, perfectly happy and I thought I was in love. In love with a mortal girl named Rachel Elizabeth Dare, I realize now how wrong I was but I could never deny how being around Rachel made me feel. I felt normal. I felt like an average kid. In 3 long years I had never felt the same way as I did when I was around Rachel. With Annabeth I always had to worry about saying somthing I might regret but with Rachel, everything was natural and easy. But love isn't natural and easy, you have to work for it, and fight for it. I had to die to realize that.

Bekendorf had interupted my moment with Rachel and whisked me away to war. Was whisked the right word? It was more like dragged but whisked seamed as good a word as anything else. I had arrived at camp, no, it wasn't camp anymore, it was a battlefield. I strapped on some armor and ran to help the others. I killed a hellhound and some emposai but none could equal to what I was about to face.

Thunder shook the ground and a black line had appeared out of no where above the battle field. It looked like a tear in a dimention and as it expanded, out stepped Kronos. He was in Luke's body and when he spoke the voice was his own but it also melded perfectly with Luke's own voice as well. He glanced around the battle field, watching as camper's and monster's blood equally stained the grass of our once perfect meadow. His gaze fell on me and he smiled evily. He charged toward me with his sword, Backbiter, but I dodged parying his blade out of the way. We fought back and forth for what seemed like an eternity, everything felt like it was in slow motion but in actuality was probably only a few short minutes. It wasn't going anywhere. Our swords met in mid air with a great clash, I pressed him and we each fought for the upper hand. He pressed even harder and I was forced to take a step back.

Kronos was winning.

Annabeth saw our struggle and came running over to help. I yelled for her to get away and leave this place but my pleas were ignored. Kronos laughed in his strange double voice and spun around, grabbing her by the neck. I saw an opening and thrust Riptide into his back. He didn't seem to notice. I half expected golden ichor, the blood of immortals, to bleed from his wound, but instead he oozed black tar. Annabeth screamed and clutched at Lu-Kronos' fingers, trying to pry them from her throat. I had to remember that this wasn't Luke anymore. This was Kronos. He might have looked like Luke and had Luke's body, but it was not him.

"Choose," Kronos rasped, "YOUR life, or hers." I was torn, if I chose to keep my life I would be choosing to save the world and everyone in it except for my best friend. How could I life in a world she didn't exist in? If I chose for him to let HER go, Annabeth would live and though I'd be dead someone else could take care of Kronos and defeat him. The world would be saved. Annabeth shook her head violently telling me not to choose to let her live.

I disobeyed.

"Let her go." I demanded. He tossed her to the ground next to me and turned to face me. I prepared myself to die..... He shot his sword towards me but I smacked it out of the way and stabbed him through where his heart should have been. He was dying, I had done it!

"Curse you Perceus Jackson..." He said, but as he sank to his knees he flicked his sword toward Annabeth and knew it would hit it's mark if I didn't do somthing. All I thought was _not her _as I jumped in front of it. Annabeth screamed. Fire ripped through my chest as I fell to the ground and Kronos gave one last satisfied smile I didn't see what happened after that because Annabeth knelt over me and turned my face to hers. Tears drenched her face as she cried telling me not to leave her.

"I'm sorry." I whispered weakly, my voice sounded alien to me. Backbiter was Kronos' special sword. It ripped a soul from it's body. I was working. She shook her head furiously as her falling tears splattered on my face, one fell into my mouth. Her salty tears tasted like the sea. I missed the sea. Being a son of Poseidon it was a big part of me and being able to just taste it one last time, it meant alot.

"Don't leave me! Don't go! Don't leave us! You can't! You can't!" She begged hysterically. A fuzzy black crept oer the edges of my eyes tainting my last picture of her. The dark kept coming and coming no matter how hard I tried to fight it it kept coming. I pressed against it's heaviness until it took over completely.

And now I was dead, floating, asking questions with no answers, and realizing how much I had truly loved Annabeth without my ever noticing it. I regreted many things, but saving Annabeth was not one of them. I kept floating.................................................................................................. Suddenly, I was falling, I kept falling, wind rushed past me, screaming in my ears like the Furies. I kept falling and then I felt pain, pain?! But I was dead! There was no more feeling when you were dead right?! It burned! Someone had to make it stop! If I wasn't dead then would someone PLEASE KILL ME?! I wanted the horrible pain to end. I found my lips and screamed, I was falling and burning! My chest was on fire! I would rather have taken a hundred, no, a thousand years in the fields of punishment than have to endure this. Then someone screamed a bloodcurdling scream that if it were possible would have made my ears bleed, I realized it was me. Then it was gone, the pain, the dark, the falling, the screaming, all gone. It was white. White? No, this wasn't simply white, it was blinding light, I tried to shut my eyes to block out the light, it worked. I opened them again and everything focused. My heart pounded and so did my head, I was in a room, it looked like a hospital but somthing told me it wasn't a typical one. Somthing gold came into my line of sight, it was someone's hair, and had grey eyes. I recognized them immediately.

"Annabeth?" I croaked. A tear ran down her face and she smiled. She was beautiful, I couldn't imagine waking up to something better.

"Oh Percy! Your alive! Your okay!" she breathed, relieved. Then she did something I never would have been able to foresee possibly even if I was the Oracle of Delphi. She kissed me, then she was gone.

"Chiron! Chiron! He's awake!" she cried from a distance. Hooves clopped quickly into the room.

"Oh, Percy, my dear boy!" he said.

"What happened to Kronos?" I interupted.

"You killed him...." Annabeth trailed off. I tried to apologize, Luke had been important to her, but I couldn't gather the energy to project my words. Chiron said he'd IM my mother and left the room. I tried to apologize again but my voice cracked so many times it sounded like I was choking.

"Shh, Percy, it's okay, really. _I'm _okay" she said putting a finger over my lips. I stayed quiet. I looked down at the blood soaked bandages that were wrapped tightly around my chest.

"You did so well protecting Olympus that Zeus asked Hades not to allow your soul to cross into the underworld, Hades agreed and he put your soul into a sort of limbo until you woke up..." she smiled. I lifted my hand to my face and felt the tubes sticking into my nose and the side of my mouth. I groaned, intensive care.......

"Seems like a pretty small price to pay to keep you here." Annabeth said. I laughed, my chest hurt but it was nothing compared to earlier. I reached up and pulled her face to mine, kissing her, she kissed back. Today was the first day of the rest of my life and it didn't matter if I didn''t have all the answers to all my questions, but I had love and I would enjoy it. Why? Because love isn't natural and easy, you have to work for it, and fight for it, and I had to die to realize that.

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**Hey! Review please! Because reviews, like pancakes, are love!**


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